That secular work is not _necessarily_ spiritually helpful we know too well. Idleness is always disastrous; but there is much worldly work which is more disastrous still. Tens of thousands pursue it daily in utter godlessness, and train themselves by it to intense selfishness and materialism. They "mind earthly things," and "glory in their shame." Even many professing Christians manifest an alarming craving for mere worldly enjoyment; and their luxuries tax them a hundred-fold more than their benevolence. But it need not be so. Secular work _can_ be made the means of spiritual education, and the sphere for the development of piety.
The first great requisite is conversion. No obligation, indeed, rests upon Christians which does not rest upon all men, whether they be Christians or not. A perfect Christian is simply _man as he ought to be_. But in the unchristian man the disposition is wanting--he lives to himself. The Christian, on the contrary, has entered into a new life. By the Holy Spirit's grace, he has repented of sin; he is forgiven, accepted, justified, accepted into Divine sonship; he is under the influence of new principles--is essentially in a new world--acknowledges a holy law, which he now loves for its own sake--is consciously under the eye of a good Master, who is his Saviour as well as his Lord--and is thus moved by a living impulse of gratitude to Him who has died for him, and whose he is in life and death. Out of this there comes the conviction that the one object of life should be spiritual growth. Commonly men think of life as having two aims; or rather they try to solve the problem of living two lives--the one present, the other future; the one worldly, the other religious; the one affecting the body with its transitory interests, the other affecting the soul with its eternal interests. Hence the wide divorce between "the secular" and "the sacred," work and worship, holy days and common days. The more enlightened Christian knows that this is a radical mistake. The world, time, matter, the body--all have their relations and their obligations, their spheres and their claims; but they do not stand isolated from the spiritual and the unseen. Separate, they are godless. They are all intended to serve as instruments of moral discipline--to supply lessons in the school of life;--all tending, under God, to the great result. Failures they are, if regarded as _ends_ in themselves; blessed they are in proportion as they are religiously used as _means_. Apart from the conviction that this should be our one great aim, it seems impossible to hope that the spiritual will predominate over the worldly; the six days' secular toil must be destructive of the day's spiritual culture. The "prosperous" will degrade life into a mere pursuit of earthly wealth with its associated advantages, whilst the rest will simply continue the hard struggle for daily bread--"the bread that perisheth."